Wake Up, Frankfurt: Pizzeria Da Cimino

Recently, I spent three weeks traveling around Eastern Asia. When booking my transportation, I arranged for a 12 hour layover in Frankfurt to explore the city and, of course, try some pizza. In fact, upon landing at Frankfurt Airport, I immediately hopped on the train to Hauptbahnhof, Frankfurt's main rail station (and the busiest in Europe). After a 20 minute walk north of the station, I arrived at Da Cimino (Adalbertstraße 29). The city was almost completely dead on my walk over and I was worried that Da Cimino would be closed, despite the hours of 11AM-1AM posted on its website. To my surprise, however, when I arrived at 11AM, dough was being stretched and a few customers were already chowing down on pizza.

The first thing you'll notice when entering is a massive, illuminated menu above the counter which boasts more than 130 Italian items -- including 36 pizzas. The menu was not in English, but most topping items were intuitive (tomaten = tomatoes, schinken = chicken, champignons = mushrooms, and thunfisch = tuna fish). A few, however, were not (zwiebeln, for example, is apparently onions).  My friend and I kept it relatively simple and ordered one cheese pie and one pie with mushrooms (items #1 and #5). The place is decorated with futbol memorabilia and we took a seat while our pies were cooked.

I enjoyed both pies although they were a bit on the oily side -- even for someone like myself who enjoys oily pies. The taste and texture was actually slightly reminiscent of one of my favorite hometown pizza places in Maryland: Guiseppi's Pizza. I liked the cheese and sauce, but the crust was a little floury and perhaps could have benefited from another 30 seconds in the oven. This was also reflected in the mushrooms which, although tasty, were slightly undercooked for my liking. The personal pies cost 4.50 Euros and 5.80 Euros, respectively, and a single pie will certainly fill you up.

Frankly, I was just happy that Da Cimino was open. And after a couple of airplane meals, you better believe I was going to like what I ate. But objectively, Da Cimino is a solid pizza place in a land of brats and sausages. Everything from the fresh dough to the wood fired oven were more authentic than I ever imagined I'd find in German and a venture over to Da Cimino will leave you full and satisfied.

Habana Pizzas: This Is Pizza In Cuba

I recently spent a week in Cuba as part of an academic trip with Columbia Business School. You may have read my review of La Carboncita, a somewhat upscale pizza place in a residential neighborhood of Havana. My classmates and I enjoyed our meal there, but I wouldn't say that it was a typical pizza meal in Cuba. Roam the historic streets of the old city and you are bound to pass by dozens of hole-in-the-wall pizza places. In order to eat like a real Cuban, I made it my mission to try as many of these places as possible.

To be honest, they weren't good. La Carboncita, as I described in my previous post, is a privately run restaurant that, in theory, has some control over the quality of its ingredients (i.e. it can source its cheese from a farm of its choice). But most restaurants and pizza places are government institutions and have no say as to where their ingredients come from. That is one of the reasons why Habana Pizzas -- and many of the other places I visited -- were so bad.

Habana Pizzas sits along one of the main drags in Havana: Avenida 23. Perhaps my favorite thing about the place is the tagline on the sign out front: facil de encontrar, dificil de compartir. This translates to: easy to find, difficult to share. The place is pretty bare bones. Enter through a gate and walk up to the counter where you place your order. There is only one option, a pizza napolitana, which you can order with one of five toppings... the most expensive being shrimp.

To refresh your memory, there are two types of currencies in Cuba -- the Cuban Peso (CUP) and the Convertible Cuban Peso (CUC). One CUC is roughly equivalent to one US dollar and worth 24 Cuban Pesos. Most government run establishments, which cater to locals, post their prices in Cuban Pesos (CUPs). The $12.00 Pizza Napolitana below is therefore the equivalent of about $0.50 US cents. Not a bad deal. A shrimp pie would still cost you less than $1.00. Generally regular pies at these types of establishments ranged from $8.00 CUPs to $12.00 CUPs.

The pies here are made to order, unlike at some establishments where a frozen pie is simply heated up in front of you. The pies were made in a kitchen behind the counter. And for $0.50, I wasn't even upset about the fact that I saw a rolling pin being used to stretch the dough. In fact, I was impressed to see what appeared to be fresh dough!

My pie arrived in roughly five minutes. It tasted... fine. It cost $0.50 cents, so I'm not quite sure what I should have expected. The cheese was a little funky tasting. The sauce was manageable. And the crust was cracker-thin. Folded in half, it's about the equivalent of a New York City slice. I may have enjoyed it more than I would have, had a similar pizza been served to me in New York. But this is what pizza is like in Cuba, and for a few moments it was nice to eat my pie alongside locals, who were most certainly enjoying their meal more than I was.